Theresa May's first 100 days have given her clear blue water to be radical - if she dares

After being elected Conservative Party leader, Iain Duncan Smith rashly suggested that he should be judged on his first hundred days in the job. By then, he said, most people would have seen enough to form a judgement. Unfortunately for him, he was quite right. Tony Blair, who also wanted to be judged by his first few months, carefully choreographed announcements: Scottish devolution, Bank of England independence, the Low Pay Commission, a tobacco advertising ban, the Human Rights Act and a Budget. To Blair, it was almost Biblical in pace and scale. “And on the hundredth day we rested,” he wrote afterwards. He jetted off to Tuscany to mark the occasion.

Tony Blair in the early years - determined to set his 100 day agendaCredit:
EPA PHOTO EPA/GERRY PENNY/EPA PHOTO EPA/GERRY PENNY

For Theresa May, there is no such luck. The Prime Minister will spend her hundredth day in Brussels, at her first European summit - the latest of many meetings with European counterparts who want to know what her plan for Brexit is. This is on the rather touching assumption that there is one. Her meetings so far have left her hosts disappointed: one complained that he learned more from her Tory party conference speech than in talking to her. How are they supposed to get the measure of the woman? How are they supposed to game out the next few years?

If it’s any consolation, many in her Cabinet are asking the same question. After 100 days of May, few of her colleagues would be so bold as to say what she stands for, or what her -ism might be. When Mrs May meets her ministers, she does so formally - rather than chat on a sofa or (as Mr Cameron often did) in the back of a car. But she lets them do the talking, and is already famous for giving almost nothing away

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But we do know, by now, the outlines of her Government. And we know what she doesn’t like: she has so far listed about 20 enemies ranging from “citizens of the world” to human rights lawyers. Where there is harmony, she will bring discord – if she thinks the harmony is rotten and the discord overdue. She has happily torn up the decades-old consensus banning grammar schools and now plans a parliamentary battle to reintroduce them. She has also ended the Blair-era convention that Prime Ministers do not question Bank of England policy. Low interest rates, she says, hurt savers and stoke an asset boom that rewards the richest. The chief promulgator of these low rates – Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England – has suddenly found himself on a battlefield.

If anything she has been a bit too keen on biffing enemies. If she’s trying to encourage Mr Carney to resign and go back to Canada, she may well succeed. But if not, why attack his policies with such vigour? And what might she propose as an alternative? Also, if she is steeling herself for negotiations with the EU, why not use generosity as a weapon? To guarantee the residency of all EU citizens in Britain would disarm her critics on the continent, and give Britain the moral upper hand. And after such a divisive referendum why not advocate a liberal, globally-minded Brexit that both sides might support?

She has been unafraid to stamp her personal authority on the Cabinet, applying firm leadership at a time when it was urgently needed. She has shown she is keen to fight unpopular battles - but she has been weaker on how, precisely, to fight them. She has been commendably specific in saying her Government will be dedicated to the “just managing” classes, those earning about £20,000 a year. But how? We have heard almost nothing about this. Her flagship reform, so far, is bringing back grammar schools - which tend to help pupils from wealthier backgrounds. There has been nothing, so far, for the skilled working class.

In fact, this is the very demographic that is most at risk from the package of cuts that George Osborne left behind. The Chancellor’s five-year mission was to increase the minimum wage, to some £9 an hour - which will help workers at the bottom (apart from those who will then be priced out of a job). But those on below-average wages? They’ll be the ones whose income will be squeezed by the cuts to tax credits and Universal Credit. If she is serious about switching the focus away from the lowest-paid, and towards the “just managing”, then she will need to do so with money.

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It’s hard to judge any Prime Minister before their first Budget. Mrs May made quite a show of defenestrating George Osborne at the beginning of her premiership, and it remains to be seen how much of his economic agenda will survive. For example, is she still committed to British employers implementing one of the highest minimum wages in the world? And is she as cautious as Mr Osborne was about using tax cuts to spur growth?

Next month, Philip Hammond will deliver his Autumn Statement - which, nowadays, is a mini-Budget. Our new Chancellor is a gloomy sort, depressed about Brexit and where it might lead. But he can hardly be depressed about the political position of the Conservative Party. Mrs May and Mr Hammond have political security that their predecessors could only have dreamed of. With an 18-point lead in the opinion polls, it’s hard to remember a time that a Labour victory at the next election looked less likely. And to this we can add Ukip’s stunning disintegration. It could have morphed into a working-class party able to do to Labour in the north of England what the SNP has done in Scotland. Instead, it seems to be falling apart.

Mrs May and Mr Hammond have political security that their predecessors could only have dreamed of

Here lies Mrs May’s extraordinary political opportunity: to recruit the voters that Ukip wrestled away from the Labour Party, and help the “just managing” classes with a Budget that will cut their taxes. This might mean tearing up much of the Osborne settlement, and ending the planned erosion of support for low-paid workers. It’s hard to think of a better time for radical economic reform - presuming, of course, that she has an appetite for it.